District Gets Serious About Stopping Residency Cheats

Parents invariably want the world for their children, and often go to great lengths to do what they feel is in their son's or daughter's best interest.

Sometimes, that may even mean taking illegal steps like enrolling them in a neighboring public school district they believe is superior to their home district.

For years, Fair Lawn School District has been the recipient of such parental attempts at falsified child enrollment. Just last week, the board of education hired a residency investigator and disenrolled two students whose families were found to be living out-of-district.

While Superintendent Bruce Watson said he sympathizes with parents who want a better education for their children, it’s his responsibility to protect the district’s assets.

“Do I blame somebody who tries to put their kids into a better school system so they have a better future? No, I don’t blame them for trying,” Watson said. “But obviously we can’t let it go.”

Watson said Fair Lawn doesn’t have a problem with students sneaking into its schools, but acknowledged it does occasionally happen.

“I think we’re very much in control,” he said. “Will one or two people squeeze by for a while until we catch up to them? Yeah, there’s all kinds of ways to sneak and cheat the system.”

But, Watson added, “There’s very little or nothing going on that we’re not aware of. I think we’ve got it under control.”

Currently, the district disenrolls approximately four to six out-of-area students each school year, he said. Prior to 2003, however, the enrollment of out-of-district students was a serious problem.

That’s the year Fair Lawn ran a strict districtwide re-registration and went to a centralized enrollment process. All families were required to re-register their kids. 

Between 2003’s spring re-registration and the time school started that September, Watson said the district lost 143 families who chose not to return, presumably for residency reasons.

Since 2003, rather than being able to register your child at an individual school, all parents or guardians must prove residency at the central residency office, located in the trailer adjacent to the high school.

Once the office checks and approves a child’s residency, he must then be enrolled at the individual school where he’ll be attending. Schools will not enroll children until they’ve been given the go ahead from the central residency office.

If someone does manage to slip through the cracks during residency registration, there are administrators on staff who follow up on tips the district receives about suspected out-of-district students.

While the district follows up on each and every tip, Watson said most involve families they’ve already checked out and confirmed are in compliance with residency regulations.

Just because a car has New York plates or a kid buses in from Paterson each morning, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are out-of-district students, Watson explained.

“If you have a divorced set of parents and mom lives in Fair Lawn and dad lives in Paterson, the law is very lenient in the fact that all mom and dad have to do is write a letter saying that because one of them has residency in Fair Lawn, we both agree our children will go to the Fair Lawn schools.” Watson said. “That’s legal.”

Watson said the district has even encountered situations where children come from New York, but bunk with an aunt or uncle who lives in Fair Lawn so they can attend district schools.

“If the family goes through the right court documents, they give up guardianship and transfer it to the aunt and uncle, that’s perfectly legal,” he said. “We have to accept those kids.”

When a student is suspected of attending illegally, the district launches an internal investigation process.

“We do all the upfront investigation,” Watson said. “Checking the records, calling the parents or guardians and saying, ‘Look we’re looking at your residency again. I need you to come in.’ We even send some of our people to homes at 3, 4, 5 o’ clock.” 

During a home check, administrators stop in at a student’s home and ask their parents for permission to enter and inspect the child’s bedroom to ensure he actually lives there.

If families refuse to comply with the requests, the district is forced to bring in a residency investigator. The investigator contracts annually at a rate of $100 per hour, and bills about 50 payable hours per year on average, Watson said.

The residency investigator is essentially a private eye -- typically someone with legal or law enforcement experience -- who works on call, whenever the district requests.

“They submit reports to us, they’ll come to closed sessions and physically be there and talk to the full board about how many times they were at the house,” Watson said. “Did they get in? Did they search the bedroom? Were they denied entrance? What did we see at 5 o’clock in the morning? What did we see at 8 o’clock at night?”

If a student is confirmed to be attending illegally and disenrolled, the family has the right to appeal the decision at a board hearing. If the board upholds the child’s disenrollment, the family can appeal the case to the commissioner of education.

“As much as it’s time consuming and bothersome," Watson said of the disenrollment process, "it’s the right thing to do in a democratic society." 

In addition to having their kids removed from the school district, families of out-of-district students can be taken to court and forced to pay back tuition. In the past, Fair Lawn has pursued court cases against out-of-district students, but Watson said they haven't had to recently.

He said the two board-approved student disenrollments last week involved families who had moved out of Fair Lawn during the course of the school year but continued sending their children to Fair Lawn schools.

Watson said he had no intention of taking the families to court to recover back tuition.